Recommended Books

Books on Bias for Non-specialists

Click on the titles for more information:

Dan Ariely (2008) Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions Harper Collins

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (2007) Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts Harcourt

Stuart Sutherland Irrationality: the Enemy Within (First edition, 1994: Second edition, 2007)

Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini (1994) Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds New York: Wiley

Cordelia Fine (2006) A Mind of its Own: How your brain distorts and deceives

Robert Cialdini (1988) Influence: Science and Practice (Second Edition)

Textbook treatment of a range of research on what factors make someone comply with another's wishes

If you've wondering why the references here are so similar to those on WikiPedia, it's because I've copied content from this site to WikiPedia, not vice versa.

A note about popular books like the above: their function is usually to present conclusions from the best, most well-replicated research. They don't show you bad research or look deeply into controversies. Hence they are not so useful in learning how to be a psychologist, but they each give you an excellent overview of a large amount of research.

Other Books for Non-specialists

These books aren't primarily about bias, but do describe some bias research.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2005) Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets (Second Edition) Random House/ Penguin

Not an introduction to cognitive biases, but an application of some of the science to a specific domain, namely financial markets.

Malcolm Gladwell (2005) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Google Books info)

A very readable popularisation of the science of intuitive judgement and some of its pitfalls, including the effects of stereotypes.

Richard Wiseman (2007) Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives (Google Books info)

A round-up of odd and unusual psychological research, presented as 'quirky' but with some important results on stereotypes, halo effects and other biases.

Leon Festinger et al. (1956) When Prophecy Fails

A report of how a group of psychologists infiltrated a UFO cult to see how they would react to the falsification of their prophecy. Recently reprinted in the UK. (WikiPedia entry)

Noah Goldstein et al. (2007) Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion

Round-up of persuasion research for business managers and marketers

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2008) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Google Books info)

Highly influential book about applications of bias research in public policy

Books for Specialists: Hot Cognition and Self-directed bias

Elliot Aronson (Ed.)(1999) Readings About The Social Animal, Eighth edition. New York: Worth

A great source of classic research papers on social pressure, cognitive dissonance, social perception and the biases that make it hard for people to get along.

Mark D. Alicke, Joachim I. Krueger and David A. Dunning (Eds.)(2005) The Self in Social Judgment. Psychology Press

Detailed reviews of the literature on a number of biases

Books for Specialists: Heuristics and Biases Research

Jonathan Baron (1994) Thinking and Deciding Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Outstanding in its breadth and depth and bringing together a great mass of psychological research along with economic and philosophical theory, this is a definitive textbook on human reasoning, how it can go wrong and how we can improve it.

Kahneman D., Slovic P., and Tversky, A. (Eds.) (1982) Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press

This is the definitive scholarly resource on the heuristics and biases research programme, which deals mainly with the "cold" biases in reasoning and decision-making.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (Eds.)(2000) Choices, Values and Frames Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Reid Hastie and Robyn M. Dawes (2001) Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman (Eds.)(2002) Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

A collection of papers reporting on developments in heuristics and biases research.

Rüdiger F. Pohl (Ed.)(2004) Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases In Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Psychology Press. ISBN 1841693510 (Google preview)

David L. Hamilton (Ed.)(2005) Social Cognition: Key Readings. Psychology Press. ISBN 0863775918

A useful collection of research papers (some abridged for this publication) on how we perceive other people and ourselves.

J. Richard Eiser and J. van der Pilgt (1988) Attitudes and Decisions London: Routledge

Somewhat out of date but a good introduction for psychology students

Academic Papers on Hot Cognition and Self-directed bias

Ziva Kunda (1990) "The Case for Motivated Reasoning" (Full text PDF) Psychological Bulletin Vol. 108, No. 3, 480-498

This review article covers the relation between motivation and belief in a similar way to my thesis, arguing that both biased and accurate thinking responds to motivation. It summarises evidence for many instances of value-biased reasoning.

Hoorens, V (1993) "Self-enhancement and Superiority Biases in Social Comparison" in European Review of Social Psychology 4, Ed. W. Stroebe and Miles Hewstone, Wiley

Anthony Greenwald (1980) "The Totalitarian Ego: Fabrication and Revision of Personal History" American Psychologist, Vol. 35, No. 7

Probably superseded by more recent research on memory and self-enhancement, but significant for drawing the analogy between memory biases and the suppression of unfavourable information in totalitarian societies.

Emily Balcetis and David Dunning (2006) "See what you want to see: motivational influences on visual perception". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 91  No. 4. 612-25.

Academic Papers on Value Bias in Science

Robert J. MacCoun (1998) "Biases in the Interpretation and Use of Research Results". Annual Review of Psychology, Vol 49.

John P. A. Ioannidis (2005) "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (Full Text HTML) PLoS Medicine 2(8) e124

With probability mathematics, connects the statistical significance of a research result, its prior probability, the actual probability of being true, and the bias of the researchers.

Introduces the notion of the "Proteus Phenomenon", i.e. reverberating positive and negative results. Proposes that bias can be measured by effect size.